


Into The Dark

by sunryder



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 06:01:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunryder/pseuds/sunryder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a certain amount of job satisfaction to be derived from being an Angel of Death. And Erik Lehnsherr truly loved his job.</p><p>However, that satisfaction meant nothing when stacked against a young telepath that Erik just couldn't seem to let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into The Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Into The Dark art](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/27283) by jeriais. 
  * Inspired by [Art for "Into the Dark"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/962508) by [riais](https://archiveofourown.org/users/riais/pseuds/riais). 



> Done for the X-Men Reverse Bang over on livejournal.

The Angel of Vengeance took no small amount of satisfaction from bringing people to the end they deserved. From mortals who’d wronged their own kind, to angelic Messengers who’d broken the rules, all the way back to the man Vengeance had killed to seek justice for his own mother. 

Yes, there was a certain amount of job satisfaction to be derived from his profession. He had good Messengers to help him with the work of gathering the souls of those who’d been slain in an act of retribution, and his own work was far more interesting than some of the other Deaths. (Honestly, he couldn’t imagine how the Angel of Peace stood it. She had to stand there and watch people wither away after long, full lives. How utterly boring.)

There was, of course, one particularly distasteful part of the job: casting out his fellows. 

The offenders were mostly Messengers of the Fortunes who bent the odds a little too much in favor of their favorites, or the occasional Guardian who slacked on the job and let their charge come to unintended harm. The Messengers of Vengeance—and Messengers of his fellow Deaths—tended to know better than to act in a way that would catch Vengeance’s attention and end up getting them stripped of their powers and cast out into the darkness. 

Which is why it was so odd that he could sense a Messenger of Famine perilously close to doing something unforgiveable. 

Vengeance had been out collecting the grasping, withered soul of a child molester—who had finally been done in by one of his former victims—when the Messenger caught his senses. Vengeance paused to twist the molester’s end to look like a heart attack rather than poisoning, then slipped away to check on the Messenger’s work.

And that was how the Angel of Vengeance met Charles Francis Xavier.

Charles was glowering at a shifter who had snuck into his kitchen and put on the skin of his mother. Charles was a skinny little thing, wearing stripped blue pajamas that better suited an old man. But there was fierceness to Charles’s expression that Vengeance had not expected from a child, and that made him pay attention.

Vengeance narrowed his eyes, reaching out to feel for the lurking probability that either Charles or the shifter were about to die. Those probabilities called to every Death and their Messengers, letting them know when a person’s end might be coming, so that the appropriate division could be there to collect their soul. But whatever scant trace of an end there might have been in this kitchen was growing less likely, overwhelmed by the strange prickling sensation of mortals having a say in their own destiny, contrary to the desires of Fate. 

From what Vengeance could sense, the shifting girl shouldn’t have chosen this house for her refuge. She was cold and starving, meant to pick the house next door because it was empty. She should have raided the larder, spent the night, then slipped outside and got lost in the brewing storm. (There had been a 75% probability that the girl would die in the cold, with a 25% chance that she would survive, but would let fear of that gnawing hunger rule the rest of her life.)

But, for all that Vengeance stretched and grasped with his senses, there was no probability of Charles. 

There was no chance that the girl would walk into his house, not even the scantest glimmer that Charles would look at her and know she was a mutant, let alone welcome her into his home as a sister. Vengeance watched this unfold in fascination, never having seen such an unlikely occurrence before. There was no such thing as a person immune to the demands of Fate. 

Then Vengeance felt the echoes of something that was not quite speech brush along the edges of his mind. 

A telepath. 

Charles was a telepath with the raw strength to keep even Vengeance, a named Death, out of his mind. The power of Charles’s telepathy kept him blocked, not only from Vengeance’s gaze, but from Fate as well. As much as Vengeance searched, he could not feel any consideration for Charles factored in to the probabilities that every servant of Death carried in their bones. There was no lingering likelihood telling when Charles might die, and if Vengeance could not feel him, then none of the weaker Messengers of Death should be able to either. 

Which meant that the wayward Messenger Vengeance could feel about to break the rules should not be sidling up behind Charles and stroking her fingers along his slight shoulders. 

The boy shuddered at the sudden rush of cold and power across his spine. Charles wrote it off as a chill, unaware that the Messenger of Famine was searching for the best place to reach through his ribs and rip out his soul. 

Vengeance was… unprepared for what happened next. Strictly speaking, he was supposed to announce his presence to the Messenger and give her the chance to return with him and face judgment for her crime. Snatching a soul not marked for death would be a severe punishment in and of itself, but if Vengeance had to give chase, the Messenger would be stripped of her responsibilities and cast out into the place of devils and demons. 

However, he couldn’t seem to find the desire to follow procedure. 

Instead, Vengeance sprung forward and seized the Messenger by the throat. He wrenched her away from Charles’s vulnerable soul and took an elbow to the face for his trouble. She twisted in his grip and rammed her palm flat against his breastbone. Vengeance felt her power flicker across his skin and raised an eyebrow at the hand trying to suck the life out of a creature already counted as dead. Vengeance looked up at the female, dripping disdain for her inability to sense even the presence of another Death, let alone one of the Named. Eyes widening in realization, she tried to whisk away and disappear. But Vengeance lashed out and seized her before she vanished. 

He spared Charles the briefest of glances, watching the boy wrap a downy quilt around the shifter girl while he bustled about the kitchen preparing her a late supper. Vengeance couldn’t stay long, since there was a writhing, spitting Messenger in his grip who needed to be disposed of before she came back for the soul of a healthy child nowhere near death. Vengeance left a slight touch of his power behind to keep him informed about Charles’s wellbeing, then slipped away to the other side.

(The other Named were waiting for him, having felt his rage reaching through the ether and demanding their attention. Vengeance gave his testimony to the other six Deaths and—since he was retribution personified—he cast the offending Messenger out into the darkness himself. If that was against protocol as well, no one mentioned it.)

@@@

Vengeance had no real call to be around Charles for years after that first meeting. After all, the boy wasn’t the kind to be killing others, and no one would have cause to kill Charles. 

However, ‘no call to be around’ didn’t mean that Vengeance didn’t have license to drop by when he felt the Messengers of other Deaths approach the void in Fate that was Charles. A Messenger of Murder spent a few days hanging around Kurt Marko when Charles was twelve, patiently waiting for Marko to lose the sparse threads of his temper and kill his stepson. (The Messenger may or may not have fled at the sight of Vengeance keeping tabs on him.) 

Then there was the time Accident himself came when Charles’s powers blossomed to their full potential. (The Messengers were gossiping fools, Accident’s most of all since his people thrived on unpredictable information. Which meant Accident knew about how Vengeance had defended the boy from Famine’s Messenger, and then terrified Murder’s Messenger.) 

Vengeance and Accident had a few days of quiet company since there was only—hypothetically, since Charles refused to be sensed—a 10% probability that Charles’s sudden upsurge in power would do him any real harm, and even less when you factored in Charles’s own nature. But still, Vengeance watched, because there was no being certain when you were waiting on Charles. 

Vengeance spent those days at Charles’s beside, telling him the old stories while the shifter sister fetched him soup and Accident quietly issued orders to both his own Messengers and Vengeance’s. No word was spoken about Vengeance shirking his duties, and nothing was said about Vengeance occasionally reaching out to run his insubstantial fingers across Charles’s forehead. 

Around day three Plague arrived, silent and stoic while he watched the most fervid of the Deaths sing a human boy to sleep in a language that Plague was not certain Vengeance remembered how he knew. Charles’s power had grown exponentially, enough to overload his young brain and send him to sleep. (Plague had had a long discussion with Peace about which of them technically should be there to collect Charles since his death would be nothing more than a slip into nothingness when his cerebral cortex finally gave out. Peace finally convinced him that Charles’s gifts were technically a genetic infection, though he was beginning to understand that she simply didn’t want to face Vengeance.)

Accident and Vengeance had ignored him while he waited at the foot of the boy’s bed. If the boy died, Plague would collect him, and no amount of prodding by Accident or glowering by Vengeance would stop him, and they knew it. However, as each moment passed, Plague watched the strength of Vengeance slowly slip from him through the bond he had with Charles. It was a serious bout of rule-breaking to shore up a creature beyond their jurisdiction, but judging by the frantic pace of Vengeance’s heartbeat, Plague didn’t think he knew he was keeping the boy alive. 

Soon enough Charles’s brain had recouperated, the neurons calmed, the nerve endings stabilized. Plague gave Vengeance a nod that in his opinion Charles would not die today, and slipped back into the nothing. (If after that Plague happened to be the last of the Deaths to join the ranks tending to Charles when Vengeance was elsewhere, no one mentioned it.)

@@@

The second time Vengeance came across Charles Xavier in a strictly professional capacity, predictions about what was going to happen to him were unnecessary.

Vengeance could taste the terror on the air, feel the fear pulsing through these mortals with the sure knowledge that their world was about to die in a rush explosives and radiation. All the Deaths were working overtime to gather new Messengers to help them through the trouble of the World War that was coming. 

And now, at the moment when Vengeance could feel it all about to begin, there was Charles at the heart of it. Of course.

With one glance, Vengeance knew the whole story. The ringleader who was about to start this war was barely more than a boy, his physical age dragged out by his mutant ability but his soul still that of a child. He was called Shinobi Shaw, and he had spent his life trying to carry out his father’s grand plan for mutant kind. And he was about to succeed.

(There was a beat when Vengeance stumbled, fighting back the desire to rip apart Shaw the same way he had the man’s father. Vengeance choked back the urge and remembered that it was no longer his place to kill, but to collect. But that didn’t meant he wasn’t hoping that the likelihood of Shaw dying in this battle would skyrocket sometime soon.) 

The Americans and the Russians were going to blow one another out of the water, triggering a war that would all but wipe out their species. However, the aftermath wouldn’t lead to the mutant utopia that Shaw envisioned leading. No, there would be species wars and eugenics wars and the mutants would turn on one another until a human child would rise up and the two peoples would begin all over again. 

As was beginning to become a pattern in Vengeance’s existence, this plan of Fate’s didn’t take into account the blank void that was Charles Francis Xavier. 

Charles collapsed in the sand, a bullet from Shaw buried in his abdomen. War and Murder had taken time out of their busy schedules to watch over Charles, waiting for the life to seep out of him before they decided which one of them got to play escort and which one got to keep Vengeance from losing his temper. Charles’s children were busy fighting with Shaw’s men, what little protection Charles could offer them now gone with his pain. 

But none of that mattered when Vengeance felt the humans fire, their missiles launched in a fervor of fear. Messengers of Murder appeared, one to escort each of the mutants when the missiles struck land. The teleporter would survive, perhaps—83%—with the windstorm and the winged girl. The others were dead. 

Vengeance had a moment’s contemplation that he might take Charles’s soul now, despite it being beyond his jurisdiction. Perhaps he could spare the human the pain of the death he had coming for him. But again, Vengeance’s certainty in the path of those missiles didn’t factor in Charles.

With two fingers pressed to his temple, Charles called almost every mutant on the beach to his side. They ran as fast as he could make their legs carry them—the blue boy picking up the screamer and the bomb before he crossed the distance in one leap. Shaw saw them all move and dove for Charles, his hand giving up its density to slip into Charles’s chest and kill the telepath before he could escape.

The blond bomb shoved back the furred one and erupted. His power slammed across the beach, catching Shaw full hard in the chest before he could become less than solid and pass safely through the blast. Under Charles’s mental direction they all caught hands and slipped away, leaving Shaw in the path of dozens of missiles, with a sizzling hole in his chest.

The Messengers stared at Murder in shock, lost. There were supposed to be deaths, meant to be a war, and there they were with nothing to do. Murder had always been the fussy sort, because for many the line between accident and actual murder was a fuzzy thing, only delineated by the Messenger’s own intuition. Murder glowered at Vengeance like this abrupt shift in the way things were supposed to go was his fault. Vengeance ignored Murder, and ignored the upheaval he could feel in the very air around him. Instead, he pressed his palm to Shaw’s chest and ripped his soul from his fading body. (The blond bomb had obviously killed him for what he’d done to Charles, putting him squarely in Vengeance’s jurisdiction.) 

Murder gave out a huff at Vengeance for not bothering to give Shaw the option to become a Messenger of Vengeance. The boy had spent his life trying to avenge his father’s death by making his dreams come true, making him a perfect candidate. However, Vengeance couldn’t stomach the thought of keeping company with Shaw’s psychotic son, and if Vengeance collected Shaw’s soul strictly before it was ready to be separated from his body, no one else mentioned it. 

@@@ 

The first time Vengeance met Charles face to face, the Death had adopted the guise of a mortal.

He and Accident had taken it upon themselves—meaning Vengeance had decided and Accident had been dragged along—to handle the soul collections of all those Charles’s X-Men killed while on duty. (And yes, that had been a knock-down, drag-out fight with Murder over jurisdiction.) Rarely did the X-Men mean to kill, making those souls Accident’s, but when they did, Vengeance declared it done in retribution for the crimes committed against the mutant people.

That attachment to the X-Men meant that when Charles himself came to liberate his kind from a bunker in Canada, Vengeance was there, watching over him, collecting souls and conveniently preventing any of the X-Men from being picked up. All of this was fairly standard for their interactions, but despite being thoroughly questioned later, Vengeance would never be able to quite explain what happened next.

He supposed things took a turn for the odd when he noticed there was a woman with Charles.

A woman who invaded Charles’s personal space when he managed to ‘avoid’ a bullet. (Yes, Vengeance did pluck at the shooter’s soul to put off his aim). The woman strode up to Charles, grabbed the back of his neck, and yanked him into a kiss. Had Vengeance been less disciplined—contrary to popular opinion regarding his obsession with Charles—he would’ve ripped the woman’s soul from her body.

(To be completely honest, he stopped not because it was the right thing to do, but because he would be banished for the action and never be allowed to see Charles again.)

Charles didn’t kiss the woman back. His shoulders tensed and his hands hovered out to the side with his fingers spread, like he’d been caught in a spotlight and hoped that staying motionless would keep him from being discovered. The woman pulled back and Vengeance was almost certain Charles would’ve stayed right there and combusted in a pile of red-faced embarrassment if the shifter sister hadn’t grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him back on the mission.

In all his observations of Charles, Vengeance had never before seen him intimate with another. 

It was apparently more than he could bear. 

The group was moving methodically through the hallways, popping open each locked door and freeing the mutants within. Vengeance slipped down to the end of the hall, stepping through the last door that they would come across, before he summoned his Second to him. 

Vengeance’s Second was a young female who had come to the ranks of Deaths nearly a decade in the future, after the murder of her husband and son. (Vengeance remembered attending that death, taking pleasure in stripping the murderer’s soul from his body and casting him to the Judgment with disdain.) The female had dropped to her knees, wounded but still alive. She had picked up a gun, ready to use it now that she had completed the one reason she had to keep breathing, but Vengeance interfered. He showed himself to her, offered her the chance to spend the rest of the world collecting the souls of those who deserved the deaths they had coming to them. (Once he explained that she had full freedom to spend as much time with her family as she wished, she leapt at the chance. Now she specialized in the particularly violent extraction of rapists and abusers.)

Considering that his Second had been happily married to the same man since before she passed to the legions of the dead, Vengeance didn’t need to explain why he’d called. She took one look at him, at the tight breaths and fury in his eyes, and she knew. His Charles needed protecting. She gave him a nod accepting the responsibility to temporarily assume his place, and gave a smirk to wish him luck, then she slipped away into the ether.

When she left, she took with her the might of Vengeance, his place as one of the Named, and temporarily became an Angel of Death. The one who had been Vengeance dropped to the cold floor of the cell, overwhelmed by the sudden rush of mortality that he had put off lifetimes ago.

@@@

Charles insisted that they open every door, just in case the cells were lined with that same metal that had locked away Shinobi Shaw’s mind all those years ago. Charles had sensed every mutant in the base, at least, until they came upon him.

There was a man crumpled naked on the frigid floor, and Charles froze in heartbreak. He had no sense of the man’s mind, and for a moment he believed that they hadn’t made it in time to save him. He went to call to Logan to carry the man, unwilling to leave him here, only to stop at the steady rise and fall of the man’s chest. It wasn’t the room keeping Charles out of his head, it was the man’s own mind. Charles darted forward to check his pulse and tried to force the man back to consciousness so they could get him out of there, but Logan seized Charles around the waist and hauled him back into the hall. “Don’t touch him!”

“What? What’s wrong?” Logan’s nostrils flared, searching for some scent that had him nervous. Charles had spent more than enough time dealing with Logan’s fussing, so he knew just the way to wriggle himself free from the much stronger mutant’s grip. Raven gripped him by the arms and shoved him back to Moira, who Charles really wasn’t prepared to deal with at this moment. Raven turned questioning eyes to Logan. For all the antagonism that usually flitted between them, when they were in the field Raven and Logan trusted one another’s judgment over all others. Logan tilted his head, grimacing in confusion while he tried to piece together what his senses were telling him. 

“For goodness sake, we don’t have time for this!” 

“If Logan says he’s a threat—”

“He’s unconscious and in a cage, Raven. If he’s a threat then he can be a threat once we’re safely away from here.” Charles ignored the pinched look that meant Logan thought Charles was being naïve and shrugged off Moira’s hands to drop to his knees beside the body. He leaned forward to press two fingers to the man’s neck, partly to get a pulse and partly to see if touch would allow him to sneak past the mental shields. 

A hand snapped out before Charles could make contact. It seemed the man wasn’t quite so unconscious as they had thought.

Logan and Raven lunged forward, but Charles ignored their fervid distrust and pressed his palm to the man’s cheek. “You’re alright,” he murmured. “We’re here to set you free.” 

Charles didn’t have to be a telepath to know that the man had no idea what he was saying. Charles repeated the assurance in Spanish, only to have Raven grumble, “Does he look Latin, Charles?” 

Logan grunted out something glottal that Charles vaguely recognized as Logan’s own special brand of Canadianized German. Charles thought Logan had guessed wrong, then the man croaked, “Ja.” 

Startled, Charles stumbled, “Oh! Sind sie deutsch?”

“Task at hand, Charles!” Raven shouted. Charles nodded and slipped one arm behind the man’s back and helped him find his feet. Raven, model of efficiency that she was, stripped the scrubs off a doctor who was lying unconscious in the hall and tossed them at their latest rescue before she bolted back into the hall to make sure they were still in the clear. 

The man pulled on the trousers unashamed, and Charles absolutely, one hundred percent, did not get distracted by the stretch and flex of the man’s thighs. The man had been a prisoner for goodness sake, now was not the time to be oogling him. Never, actually, never was the time to be oogling him. Of course, that meant Logan took one sniff and stared at Charles like he couldn’t believe the times the younger man’s libido chose to kick in. In retaliation, Charles projected a very pointed image of Logan making a pass at Jean mere minutes after one of his characteristic fights with Scott had nearly devolved into sex. 

Logan rolled his eyes and dragged Moira out with him, while the rescued man seemed either unaware of or uninterested in their conversation. As soon as the fabric settled on his hips the man pushed Charles out into the hall, half a step behind the telepath while he left Logan to guard their trail. Charles sputtered something about how he was supposed to be guarding the man they’d found, not the man guarding him, but it was a difficult argument to make when Logan had put aside his doubt to smirk at even a complete stranger knowing Charles wasn’t meant for fieldwork.

@@@

Experience had taught him that the Wolverine was immortal and Charles’s shifter sister was nearly so. Those two kept their focus on getting out of the compound alive, but every few minutes they paused to stare at him like he made them uncomfortable and they didn’t know why. He knew though. He’d tried to collect each of their souls several times before he accepted that they were beyond his grip (and before they’d met Charles). Confidence in their shared ability to stand up and keep fighting was what kept him from grabbing Charles and tossing the telepath over his shoulder until they reached safety.

Soon enough they were outside the compound, he and the Wolverine flanking Charles while the shifter sister and the interloping female helped load the victims on to the jet. Just when he began to think that perhaps they might make it away free and clear, Charles stumbled and started cursing. “Raven, we’ve got to move!”

Her glower declared that people were moving as fast as she could make them, no matter what Charles said, but her regular blue faded to a periwinkle when she caught the sight of military helicopters coming hard and fast in the distance. “How in hell did they know we were here! We disabled the alarms!” The soldiers would be upon them in less than two minutes, which meant they had about thirty seconds to be in the air if they had any hope of getting away scot free. He may have put aside his calling, but he had retained enough of his strength to see the Messengers of Murder steadily appearing within the jet, expecting this all to go wrong. 

For the first time in more years than the mortals had memory, he remembered something about who he had been before he was Vengeance. When he’d been nothing but a mortal that Death had given a chance. He slowed to a stop a few yards away from the jet, ignoring how Charles was shouting at him to come on, the man fighting against one of his own men trying to drag him up the ramp. 

He wasn’t quite paying attention though; he was remembering the first time he’d heard metal sing. 

With more sense memory than deliberation he who had been Vengeance stretched out a hand and caught the closest helicopter. He pressed back, pulling on the invisible thread between him and the craft, then struck his hand forward, sending it smashing into one of its counterparts. Another he crushed with the flex of his hand, and two more he batted out of the sky with a flick of his wrist. The farthest copters began firing, but the bullets dropped when they collided with the wall of his power.

When there was nothing but smoking rubble and his own Messengers popping from body to body, collecting souls, he turned on his heel and strolled aboard the silent jet. 

@@@

Asking Azazel to speak to their newfound telekinetic had seemed like a good idea at the time.

After all, Azazel spoke German, and none of the other mutants they’d liberated seemed to know anything about the man, let alone speak his language. Charles had been curious about that, but given the amount of damage he’d done in thirty seconds, Charles supposed that the man had probably been locked in that room and kept from anyone who might have inadvertently provided him with something he could use to escape. (Though, Charles did wish he could’ve gotten a sample to know precisely what kind of material they had wrapped around that room to keep the man contained.)

So Azazel was the most logical choice, given that Logan’s own German was little more than perfunctory cursing. However, Azazel speaking German didn’t take into account that the telekenetic wouldn’t respond particularly well to Azazel being red. A factor that, honestly, Charles hadn’t considered. 

Imagine Charles’s surprise when the man took one look at Azazel and leapt off his medical bed. Scalpels and other instruments went flying, each careening towards the red mutant. Azazel bamfed out of the way, but the man’s control over metal was exquisite. The instruments dispersed throughout the room, jabbing at Azazel whenever he reappeared. 

Raven shrieked and went for the man like a Fury, trying to claw his eyes out for attacking her lover. Charles might have been nervous for their latest refugee if the man didn’t move nearly as fluidly as Raven did. Her movements were unpredictable, in defiance of the laws of gravity, but the man held his own. He wasn’t graceful—though few people were when compared to Raven and Azazel. Instead he was sheer brute force. He caught the flat of each punch and kick, deflecting the weight of them so no blow landed with the impact it needed to actually take him down. 

He reached into a whirl of smoke and force Azazel to realign himself, the red mutant’s weight just a hair off balance so he couldn’t strike how he wanted. Then Raven slithered out a thigh to wrap around the man’s neck, and rather than plant his weight and fight her off, as men were so prone to do (women had some innate sense to know better), he dropped his weight, dragging Raven down. He wasn’t fast enough to avoid the blows they were both capable of delivering, so instead he used his energy to deflect, biding his time until that one perfect opportunity made itself apparent. 

He was patient, more patient than Raven who eventually lashed out in irritation. It was a harsh strike, fierce and impractical, and Charles knew before the man moved that he’d found his moment. She went for the man’s ribs, only to have her calf seized mid-kick and wrenched up and forward. Had Raven been made of some material less bendable, he would’ve snapped her tibia clean in two. Azazel dove to catch her and got himself a knee to his sensitive nose for his troubles. The man grabbed Azazel by the back of the neck to slam him down, and the red mutant let out a scream wholly unconnected to his injuries. 

Charles darted forward and grabbed the man’s forearm, wrenching it away. Or, trying to. The man let go of Raven long enough to shove Charles back, twisting to put himself between Charles and his family. 

Raven seized the opportunity to go for the man’s throat, but with her swing half-cocked, she dropped to the ground untouched. All her mental shields crumpled under the pain the man was inflicting to keep her back. Charles lashed out psychically, only to hit a brick wall enclosing the man’s mind. Instead he flung his body forward just as he had his thoughts and slammed into the man’s back. The man struck back without looking, catching Charles hard in the ribs and sending him crashing down to the ground. “Stop this! She’s my sister!” Charles screamed.

Something about the phrase, or more likely about Charles’s desperation, sunk through the language barrier and Raven slumped to the floor with only the aftershocks of agony, her muscles unclenching as he pulled his power away from her. Azazel though, he was still howling at the man’s touch. Charles twisted around and forced himself up and between the man and the red mutant, grasping his arm and dragging down with all his weight to break the skin to skin contact that was eating away at Azazel. 

Once again the man shot out his spare hand and seized Charles by the scant scruff of his uniform to him against his chest. “Dämon,” he hissed, tightening his grip on Azazel.

“Mutant!” Charles shouted. “Not a demon, a mutant!” 

The man looked at Charles like he was a naïve child, and murmured something that Charles had no hope of understanding without the use of his powers.

Raven tried to force herself back up and into the fight, but all she could do was clench her teeth and murmur, “Vater. Vater dämon.”

The German was broken, only the essentials needed to carry the meaning, and the man released Azazel. He kept a tight hold on Charles though, and demanded, “Sprechen.”

Azazel gasped for only the necessary air, not wasting time on recovery. Between the German words, Charles caught the image of a stunning woman with a thick black braid that fell to her waist. (He’d loved her hair best when he was a boy. She would lay down beside him in their wagon and sing him to sleep. He’d wrap her hair around his fingers and cradle it under his cheek like a blanket.) He was born red with a clever tail, but his mother was a seer, and no gypsy clan would do without her, strange son or no. (They’d loved him dearly, protected him from the outside world.) She told him fantastic tales about his father. (He was a pirate, cursed by sea spirits with skin a shade that could never hide in the water. He was a warrior, the skin a mark of his status and skill.) It was his grandfather who drank too much one night and told him that his father was a Demon. (Azazel’s heart had broken that day, not because he believed his mother had lied—he’d always known they were just stories—but because his grandfather would say something so cruel.)

Through Azazel’s eyes Charles felt the first time someone outside their clan had called him a demon, had tried to drive his people away from their home because he carried the stain of Satan. The feeling was nothing new to Charles, it was the same burn and shock that almost every mutant child carried in their heart. As he did for each of those children, Charles reached out and took Azazel’s shoulder, squeezing tight to remind him that he was not alone, that he was no longer that child left to face down the doubters with no one by his side. 

This time the man didn’t yank Charles away. He listened with a furrowed brow while Azazel explained. He asked something that Charles couldn’t make out because of the mental shields, but judging by Azazel’s surprise it was a rather spectacular statement. “Was bist du?” Azazel declared, only to be embarrassed by the question the moment the words left his lips. 

The man just smirked, a grin with too many teeth like he was pleased by the inquiry. “What’s going on?” Charles demanded.

The man responded to Azazel rather than Charles, and his curiosity only increased when normally unflappable Azazel actually looked stunned. “He asked if I vanted to know who my father vas. I asked him… I asked him vhat he vas, that he could know that. He says that he vas born a mutant, but that’s not vhat he has become.”

“That’s great.” Raven snarked. “Charles, why is he still conscious?”

“I believe breaking through his mental shields would render him a vegetable.”

Raven rose to her feet with feigned grace and raised an eyebrow that said that wouldn’t be a bad thing. “And I suppose one of the anesthetics roaming around this med bay wouldn’t do the job?” 

“Ah yes, because trying to stab a telekinetic is always a good life choice.”

“Metall,” the man grunted. Azazel quirked an eyebrow, quick to forgive him for being attacked. Rather than launch into an explanation, the man raised a hand and once again the room’s various objects all lifted into the air. Only now did Charles notice that nothing was plastic. He had assumed the man had gone for the most threatening objects available, but no, everything had some metal component. Scalpels, trays, chairs, hammers, all dancing around them in a circle that amused Azazel and irritated Raven. 

Charles watched wide-eyed while the objects all returned to their proper places, the room tidied with one swift exercise of power. (Charles made a mental note to have the man work with Jean. She was the only other telekentic they had come across and she was beginning to get rather dejected about the limits of her power.) 

Raven ignored the frankly impressive display and glowered at Charles, already knowing what he was thinking. “Under no circumstances! We can’t keep him here, Charles! Not if he’s going to go around attacking people! What if does that to one of the children?”

“In hiz defense,” Azazel interjected. “He thought I vas a demon.”

“How is that a defense?” Raven demanded. “We’ve got kids all over the place with unique colors. What if he thinks Anole’s scales make him a frog and needs to be cooked, or Pixie’s wings mean that she needs to be pinned to a cork board?”

The man turned to Azazel and murmured something that amused the other mutant. Azazel replied in German and Charles got the sensation that they were poking fun at Raven for her irritation. The two had a seemingly pleasant conversation before Azazel turned back to Raven’s scowl and explained, “He vas trained to hunt demons. However, he promises that vhile he is in this house he’ll subdue the demons and make sure that they’re not actually mutants before he kills them.”

“Kills them!” Raven shrieked. 

“Ja,” the man smirked. 

Charles decided it was high time he took back the conversation. He propped his hands on his hips and frowned. “There will be no killing by residents of this house. Demon or not.”

Azazel and the man shared the same sort of commiserating look that Azazel and Charles so often liked to share about Raven. “Stop that!” he scolded. “We are a peaceful organization meant to educate and protect mutantkind. We do not condone murder.” 

“Self-defense is not murder.”

“I am aware that they are different concepts but—wait, did you just…” Charles’s brain struggled to catch up with his tongue as he realized that the man had just answered him in English. “But, you speak German.”

“When you haven’t spoken English in a while, you need a refresher.” Raven thought that answer was entirely made of shit, and Charles didn’t even have to look at her to feel the furious befuddlement she was projecting. However, whatever response Charles might’ve had to her disbelief was drowned out by how he stepped forward, his broad—and still naked—chest just one deep breath away from Charles. His higher brain functions absolutely did not derail at the warmth of the man, or at the vibrant, green shade of his eyes. No, Charles was perfectly in possession of his faculties when the man stretched out one steady, calloused hand and said, “My name is Erik.”

@@@

Charles had been counting to ten for the four hundred and thirty second time this semester of Introduction to Biology when he felt panic from the back garden. Under normal circumstances he would’ve brushed across the sensation to be sure it was nothing critical and simply gone back to his class, but Charles could only explain the basics of cellular structure so many times before he wanted to sob. So he told the students to get started on their homework, he would back in just a moment. 

However, when Charles reached the back garden, he regretted that decision.

Moira was yelling at Erik. No, not quite yelling. Some strange blend of shrieking and scolding that only particularly formidable women could manage. She had one had fisted on her hip while the other was frantically pointing just close enough to Erik’s nose that Charles thought for a moment he might bite it off just to be contrary. Scott and Jean stood at Moira’s shoulders, joining her with twin expressions of distaste at whatever Erik had done this time. (And at this point, there was no telling. Moira seemed to object to everything about Erik from his name, to how he ate his dinner.)

The older students were sprawled across the lawn behind Erik. From the occasional developing bruise and strategically placed ice pack Charles could tell that today’s training session had been rough, but they all had that excited mental buzz that meant they had appreciated the challenge and they’d done well. A few of the more determined ones looked half a breath away from leaping up to Erik’s defense, but Logan and Alex kept them restrained with the occasional look, not at all concerned for Erik’s wellbeing. Under normal circumstances Charles would’ve agreed, but judging by the fury of that finger he thought that Moira might actually do some damage first. 

“Hello all,” Charles called out. “What seems to have you all so concerned today?”

Moira whipped around with enough fervor that she almost smacked Erik in the face. “This man is insane!” 

“Really? And just what sort of mental deficiencies has Erik exhibited?” 

Charles’s response had been teasing and more than a little snide, which he really shouldn’t have done. Moira’s expression settled into something relentless as she spat, “He attacked the children.”

All humor slid away from Charles at such an accusation. In the past Charles had met the scarcest hint of abuse with a full mental probe and no option of refusal. Under no circumstances would he allow children in his home to be abused, not after what he had borne in his own youth. Such accusations were rare, and the one time Charles had found a new staff member planning to blackmail one of the students into intercourse, Charles had dropped him into a coma before he had the chance to draw breath. He’d eventually stripped the man’s hypothalamus of his sex drive and seen him sent to prison for what he’d done to other children in the past. (After that Charles always conducted personnel interviews himself and refused entry to those who wouldn’t let him touch their minds to be sure.)

“That’s bullshit!” Marie interrupted, no longer content to sit sprawled across the grass and listen to Erik be accused. “He didn’t touch anybody! He was teachin’ us!”

“Rogue,” Jean scolded, “that’s not training, that’s abuse.” 

The other children decided they were done listening, and popped up to join Marie in her defense, while Moira, Jean, and Scott tried to make them see reason. Instead of parsing through their fervor, Charles turned to Erik. The metallokinetic didn’t look offended, he quirked an eyebrow and extended his hand to Charles. It was Charles’s preferred position when scanning someone’s mind with their permission (it made them feel better thinking that Charles needed skin to skin contact to read them). With no hesitation Charles touched his fingers to Erik’s palm and slipped his consciousness alongside the strongbox of Erik’s own mind. 

The layers around Erik unfurled like the petals of a flower, revealing just enough of his thoughts to rapidly replay the events of that afternoon. The children were practicing, but nothing that would test them, that would be useful in the real world. Erik had led them all into the hedge maze and had the children break into two teams with the admonition that they had to make it the end without Erik, Logan, or Alex catching them. The first try was abysmal, every last student caught within two minutes. Erik had dragged them all back to the beginning, explained what they’d done wrong and how they could do better, then sent them through again. The second time they’d lasted three minutes. In the end, one team had succeeded by leading the other team into a trap to keep the X-Men busy, then blasting a hole straight through the center of maze and just running for their lives. 

Charles felt Erik’s apology for the hedges before he brushed a gentle touch along Charles’s consciousness and retreated back to his own mind. Charles shuddered in pleasure at the sensation, then cracked open eyes that he didn’t remember closing. Sometime in their transference the argument had ceased, and everyone in the group was staring at them. However, Charles turned his attention to Logan. 

“It was good, Charlie. The kids think they wanna join the X-Men, and this was the closest we’ve gotten to giving them a taste of what that’s like.” Charles gave a brusque nod, he could sense the students’ concurrence. 

“You honestly think that bombarding the students like that wasn’t abuse?” Moria demanded. 

Rather than snap off the reply Charles was expecting, Logan slowly shifted to his feet, enough lethal restraint to the action that every eye drew to him in anticipation. Their animal instincts knew better than to agitate a predator in this condition. “I think that out of the lot of us, I’d know what a mutant needs to know to survive, and I say he taught the kids what we should’ve been teaching them all along.” With Alex at his side, it was hard to discount that the two of them had more firsthand experience with mutant abuse than anyone. Save perhaps Scott, who furrowed when Jean and Moira turned to him for a retort. 

Instead, Scott gave the argument its due and levelheaded consideration before he nodded. “We should set up a rotating schedule so that all the older students practice with different groups and get a sense of what real battle conditions are like.” Jean tossed up her hands, but that was nothing compared to Logan’s triumphant grin. 

“Explain to me,” Moira demanded, “how you know this. Alex and Scott were imprisoned, while Logan was a military experiment. How do you know all this, Erik?” 

Charles felt the flutter of a mind rearranging itself, Erik sorting through his own memories. “Can’t answer the question?” Moira sneered. “Or did you get your skills doing something that means we should keep you away from the children?” 

Whatever Erik had been mulling on, his mind stilled and his jaw clenched. He strode up to Moira, hesitated, then pulled back his left sleeve. Moira’s mind blanked in shock, and her hand mindlessly floated forward to touch his revealed skin. Some part of Charles was disturbed at the thought of Moira laying hands on Erik, but thankfully Charles didn’t have to examine it too closely because Erik pulled away before she could make contact. “Wh— How?” she sputtered, the wheels of her thoughts slowly beginning to spin again. 

Logan had far less decorum than the others and, with a firm grip above the sleeve, twisted Erik’s arm back. “You were in a camp,” Logan murmured. 

“I destroyed the camp,” Erik corrected.

Charles shifted closer, then froze at the strung of numbers tattooed on the soft skin of Erik’s inner forearm. 

“Your mutation keeps you young?” Logan asked.

“Secondary effect.” Charles must’ve made a wounded noise, because Erik stepped forward and gathered him close. “I’m fine, Charles. It was long time ago.”

Charles absolutely did not bury his face in Erik’s chest to feel his heartbeat in lieu of sensing the stead hum of his mind.

@@@

Time was more complicated than mortals gave it credit for. While a creature was bound to the mortal plane, time moved linearly. Cause and effect, one step to another in a logical, sequential progression. But when you died time became… complicated. It was a web, a tangle of effect back to the cause that would get things where they needed to be. 

Things were fairly easy for the Deaths (he couldn’t image what it was like for the Fates, always scrambling to re-write history so all those rash decisions made via free will came together with the things that simply had to happen.) The Deaths just collected those souls that were meant to be gathered. There was quite a bit of waiting involved, to see whether or not someone would exercise that individuality that would prevent them from meeting their end. All of those decisions sparked another hundred decisions, and every death meant that another would have to live or die in turn. A boy would die in a car accident in the winter snow, meaning he wouldn’t be alive to shoot the intruder who broke into his house twenty years later. So many things hinged on the continued existence of others that Erik had grown accustomed to flitting back and forth through time, slipping along the branches of the web, navigating the intersections of lives. 

In all of that, Erik had forgotten that the fluidity of time applied to him as well.

He had been born Erik Lehnsherr. Had been born a mutant. Had lived through one of the greatest tragedies to ever befall humanity. Had become Vengeance when a madman killed his mother in an attempt to make Erik use his powers. Erik had lost control, had killed every last Nazi in that camp, boiling the blood in their veins. 

That act had stretched his powers too far, bringing Erik to his knees and nearly killing him where he stood. Out of the darkness closing in on him, Death had appeared. She was a young woman, with bright red hair, healthy curves, and plump lips that framed her friendly smile. She had laid down beside Erik and his mother, untouched by the blood and the dirt. She’d made him the same offer that untold years later he’d made to his Second, to all his Messengers of Vengeance. She’d offered him the chance to spend the rest of time collecting the souls of those who deserved their deaths, and Erik had smiled through bloodstained teeth. 

According to the perspective of mortals, Erik had only been Vengeance for several decades, but in the truth of time he had always been Vengeance. And yet, he’d always been Erik too. 

It was Vengeance who knew the teleporter on sight because of his association with Charles, but it was Erik who lost control at the feel of demon blood. It was Erik who the outcasts among the children grew fond of, but Marie could only touch him because of Vengeance. (She couldn’t take the life of one who was technically dead.) Vengeance was the one the children came to when they had nightmares about being kept in a cage, but Erik sang them his mother’s Yiddish lullabies. Vengeance was the one who took up a patrol, but Erik was the man who played chess with Charles at the end of every night. 

Yes, just chess.

Erik had imagined this romance business would be fairly simple. After all, he’d been looking after Charles since he was nothing more than a boy. 

However, it seemed mortals didn’t approach romance in quite the same way. (Not that he had a considerable amount of experience in how the dead approached it, either.) From what little attention he had ever paid to the mortals, there was supposed to be dinner (which Erik had every night with Charles and his students), shared activities (hence chess), alcohol (drunk while playing chess), and something mortals described as “flirting,” although Erik wasn’t quite sure how this activity was meant to be more efficient than simply stating his intent to spend the rest of eternity beside Charles. 

Every time he thunked down his glass to demand that Charles just love him already, his Second slipped out of the ether and frantically shook her head no. Erik rolled his eyes, but held his tongue. 

On one such night, Erik gathered up the utinsels while Jean carried the plates with her power. Most of the other students scampered away the second they finished eating while the ones in trouble stomped off to the kitchen to handle cleaning. In a gesture Erik found horrifically unsubtle, Moira drew Charles out of the room with questions about the schedule for next semester. The moment the door closed behind them Logan slouched up against the table beside Erik, pausing just long enough to give Jean a leer that made her storm out of the room in a huff. Erik rolled his eyes. “None of you are particularly good at subtlety, are you?”

“Charlie likes it when we don’t try to hide who we are.”

“He’s not a particularly good measure of common sense though, is he?”

“Common sense isn’t what we keep Charlie around for.” Erik smirked because no, it wouldn’t be. 

Logan stared at him, steady and patient, while Erik collected all the dishes that Jean wouldn’t be back for since she couldn’t figure out if Logan made her uncomfortable or aroused. Logan knew full well that the silence wouldn’t make Erik uncomfortable, so he took the time to decide precisely what he wanted to ask. “Who are you?” was more blunt than Erik was expecting, but it really shouldn’t have been. “Marie can’t hurt you. Raven recognizes you from someplace. And I know you, but I don’t know your face. Explain that to me.” 

Erik casually lifted everything with a trace of metal from the table and headed out of the room, the various trays, pitchers, and serving dishes all trailing along behind him. “You know who I am, Wolverine. We’ve shared more than a few adventures together, and when you’re ready, you’ll remember me. Marie will remember me at some point as well, though I doubt Raven will ever go beyond that lurking feeling that she’s forgotten my face.”

“Can’t just tell me and make it easy, can you?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“In the meantime?”

“I suppose that you’ll have to trust that my motives are pure.”

“And what in the hell are those motives?”

Erik flicked his eyes to the door that Charles had walked out of. Logan snorted. “So, not really that pure, then.”

“Entirely pure. Just not entirely wholesome.”

@@@

Erik had quirks; Charles would have to be an idiot not to notice that. Sometimes Erik would get this look on his face, like he was about to tell Charles everything the telepath wanted to know. But then he’d get distracted by something over Charles’s shoulder, slug back a drink, and be painfully disagreeable for the next hour. Not that he was ever particularly agreeable in the first place, but he grew downright sullen when he stopped himself from speaking. 

It was just one of the multiplicity of quirks that Charles was beginning to understand were part of Erik’s charm. The man was stoic to the point of disconnect, refusing to speak unless he had something he devoutly believed was worth saying. When he did open his mouth it was with a deep, slightly German drawl, and a conviction that you felt down to your bones. Charles supposed that you really did only need to speak once a day if every time you spoke you moved mountains. 

However, Erik never did speak about the things Charles wanted to know, and Charles was in the rare position that he couldn’t just find what he was looking for. Thus far he had been able to determine that demon hunting was one of the many talents Erik had developed when his mother was killed in the camps. (What else constituted “special skills” was something that Erik had thus far managed to avoid explaining.) 

There was a rush, Charles had to admit, to being forced to draw knowledge out of Erik the old-fashioned way. Charles had spent the whole of his life with all the answers he could ever want laid bare at his feet. He had to approach Erik like other people had to, and it was just as exhilarating as it was frustrating. Charles’s gift didn’t matter here. Being the world’s most powerful telepath meant nothing when Erik’s mind was locked up tight. Erik didn’t give two pence about Charles as the Professor, or Charles as the leader, or Charles as the telepath, all he cared about was the Charles at the root of it all.

Charles supposed he could have borne Erik’s long looks a little better if they had been directed at his position or his power rather than the slightly disheveled Englishman he actually was. 

Erik listened patiently while Charles talked about how much he missed the study of genetics, how uncomfortable he felt trying to teach teenagers when he’d always preferred college students, and how most of the time Charles felt like he should turn over authority of the X-Men to Logan, but the other mutant refused to hear of it. Erik listened to Charles’s fears, and rather than spout meaningless drivel until Charles just agreed so he could make him stop talking, Erik cocked his head to the side and listened. What’s more, he raised an eyebrow and asked, “Why don’t you set up lab hours?”

“What?”

“Set up a time every day when you are in your lab being a geneticist and no one is allowed to disturb you unless they’re under attack.”

“I can’t do that,” Charles scoffed.

“Why not?”

“Because—because I can’t!” 

Really, the whole thing just deteriorated from there. If Charles wanted more time to be a geneticist, then Erik thought he should make the time to be a geneticist. If he was uncomfortable teaching the children in school classes, then he shouldn’t. He should teach them to use their powers, take them with him on runs, show them the fine art of British baking, or anything other than trying to return to basic biology for seventh graders. If Charles didn’t want to lead the X-Men on raids, then he should trick Logan into taking control under the guise of “teaching” Charles more about military tactics. 

Charles had never met anyone so unequivocally on his side as Erik. Honestly, even if Erik didn’t spend a considerable portion of his conversations watching Charles’s lips move, Charles still would’ve been smitten anyway. 

However, no matter how supportive Erik was, there was still that niggling sensation of doubt flitting about in the back of Charles’s mind. 

Erik was hiding something, and Charles didn’t need his telepathy to know it. 

Erik gave only the sparsest information necessary to answer questions, when he didn’t avoid them entirely. Charles trusted Erik completely, listened to his advice, and desperately wanted to sink into Erik’s mind just to know what it was like in there. Professor Xavier, however, he couldn’t afford to trust people who kept things from him. It was his responsibility to protect the school, to tend to the children, to be the face and the voice of their people. The Professor couldn’t be wrapped up in someone who he couldn’t trust to protect that cause, to bear the weight of it. Who could bear the weight of him. 

As dearly as Charles was beginning to hold Erik, Xavier had to be uncertain. 

@@@

“You’re being ridiculous, Raven.” Charles ignored her skin steadily turning purple in outrage while he strode past her and into his lab. Thus far everyone in the school had respected Charles’s office hours, leaving him to work quietly until Erik roamed down and reminded him that he needed to eat. Everyone, except for Raven. This was the third time since the lab hours had been instituted that Raven had stormed in to lecture him about Erik, and Charles was beginning to get frustrated. 

“Don’t call me ridiculous, Charles. You only trust him because he’s—”

Charles whipped around, “Don’t you dare accuse me of endangering my students because I fancy someone, Raven. Azazel only joined the X-Men because he thought you were pregnant. A state you couldn’t have reached unless you were, quite literally, sleeping with the enemy.”

“Just because Azazel wasn’t on our side that didn’t make him the enemy, Charles!” Charles flipped on his computer and fought back the urge to should that yes, actually, that was the definition of enemy. “And no matter what he might’ve done, Azazel has never tossed around the kind of power that this guy does. If Azazel lost it then there are at least half a dozen mutants who could stop him before he did any damage. If this guy goes postal then the building would be around our ears before anyone could stop him.” 

Charles rolled his eyes and shuffled through the haphazard stack of notes he had scattered over one of the many desks Erik had brought down for him. “Two weeks ago you didn’t like Moira because she’s not a mutant.”

“Between Moira and this psychopath I think Moira is the preferred option!”

“You and I both know you would only prefer Moira for the three days it would take you to forget Erik, then suddenly Moira would be objectionable once again.”

Raven slammed her palms down, rattling the metal table. (Had Charles not endured Raven’s puberty he might’ve actually been startled at the outburst.) “He makes me uncomfortable, Charles.” He actually looked up at the strained seriousness in his sister’s voice. 

“Is there something in particular about him that feels wrong to you?”

Raven bit her lip. “Has Logan mentioned anything?” 

“He hasn’t, no. Though Logan has never willingly admitted to anything making him nervous before.” 

“Nervous isn’t it,” Raven denied. “It’s just, there’s something about him that’s familiar. Like I’ve met him someplace and I should remember where.”

“Someplace… unfortunate?”

“I don’t know,” she grumbled. “I just can’t put my finger on it, and every time I try it slips away.” Charles thought for half a second about offering to look for her, but considering how poorly that usually went, he kept his offer to himself. Raven intertwined her fingers with his. “We don’t really know anything about him, Charles. And I don’t want to see you get hurt. Moira may not be my first choice for you, but at least she’s proven that she’s on our side.”

@@@

“Bobby, get down!” Rogue shouted, only to have Iceman whirl around to find her rather than get the hell out of the way of the bullet careening towards his head. Moira had all but exploded at Erik’s suggestion of live rounds, but Logan had pointed out that Erik couldn’t protect the students from beanbags if something went wrong. Eventually they’d settled on paintballs for this session, though Erik knew Alex had been busy with Hank devising a non-lethal, metal-related gun that would be a better simulation of what it was like to actually be shot at. (Logan’s most strenuous objection to the paintball guns had been that they sounded wrong, and he didn’t want the students with heightened senses to be blindsided by the noise in their first real firefight.)

Bobby was cautious enough that he’d lasted longer than most, while his friend John had been too sure of himself and had been taken down in the first five minutes. Piotr and Kitty had gone down next, with Kitty getting surprised and Piotr taken down trying to protect her. (Erik didn’t feel he was in a good position to scold them for the weakness of their emotional attachment when he’d become mortal for his). Bobby had a habit of checking around corners by giving the shooter a clear view of his face, and that had just gotten him expelled with a purple paintball to the crown of his head. Marie and a green, lizard-like boy named Anole were the only two left, and Erik had high hopes for them both. (They had a good mix of raw power and common sense under fire that Erik could work with.) 

He planned on dragging out the rest of the training session to get the two students off the defensive, but Accident popped up beside him. Erik wasted a few seconds staring at his old friend in horror, then grabbed the microphone and demanded that they clear the room. 

Thankfully Logan was neither an ass nor an idiot on the battlefield, and he dragged them all out for a discussion on where they went wrong and how they could do better. (Logan did spare a moment to raise an eyebrow at Erik to see if he needed help, then joined the rest when Erik waived him on.)

“What are you doing here?” Erik hissed. 

Accident tossed up his hands. “Just forewarning you. It’s only a 3% probability that usually I’d ignore but you’re, you know, you. So I thought I’d give you a heads up.” 

He’d said the probability in a present tense, which meant that whatever Accident was here to collect for could still happen. Erik loomed closer to demand what Accident was feeling, but the other Death pursed his lips at Erik about to ask him a question they both knew he couldn’t answer. “Don’t pout,” Accident grumbled. “You could find it if you looked.” 

It was impossible for Erik to sense the fickleness of Death when he was stuck to mortality, which meant that whatever Accident was referring to was something Erik could find with his gift. Erik stretched out his sense of metal, steadily pulsing outward until his touch encompassed the whole of the Danger Room. He caught something amiss in the massive computer beneath the room’s floor, some component running hotter that it should. With invisible fingers Erik plucked at the thread of tension and felt the echoes of the strain ripple out to various parts of the machine. “It’s going to explode.”

Accident stuck his hands in his pockets. “Probably not quite that dramatic, though it is possible. In the next few months it’ll overload, stalling out the program at the worst possible moment.” 

“Why did you warn me about this?”

“I figured you’d pick it up anyway, but just, you know, in case.” 

“Why?”

“You’re my best friend.” Accident shrugged. “And you’re happy here. As a mortal. If people start dying at the school you’ll feel like you need to take up your mantle again to defend them. Then you’ll be back with us, which is good, but you’ll be sad, which gets ugly.”

Erik had thought Accident was just fussing over him, but over the next few days more and more Deaths popped up at the slightest flinch that something might be wrong. Famine started following around a girl suffering from self-esteem issues, while Murder cast a few significant looks at Scott before the next X-Men mission, and even Plague dropped by to scowl at Erik then glare at Hank’s next experiment. 

Fixing the Danger Room had been simple to explain since it was well within Erik’s skill set to sense that something was wrong with the machine. The rest though, those involved knowledge that Erik couldn’t quite explain. But whatever question there might have been, the students shrugged them off. When Erik mentioned to Charles that perhaps he ought to have the girl speak to Jean as the school’s psychologist, Moira glowered, but the girl’s friends agreed. Scott stayed out of the next mission, no so much because Erik asked him to, but because Logan smacked him so hard upside the head that he couldn’t quite walk a straight line. Hank thought Erik was fussing, but willingly subjected his process to peer review by the other scientists on staff. (He bought Erik a whole shelf of cookies when they realized his experiment was three variations away from being lethal to telepaths.) 

The other Deaths smirked at him every time one of the other mutants expressed their gratitude and told Erik how glad they were that he’d come. More often than not those hugs would be followed up with pushing Erik in the general direction of Charles and offering him advice about a new way to seduce the telepath. (And yes, that made the other Deaths laugh as well.)

One day Marie had hugged him, just because she could, then handed Erik a box of pastries from the French bakery Charles was too British to admit that he adored. She dropped a kiss on his cheek and said, “He’s in the basement. I hope you don’t turn up to dinner.” Erik laughed and headed down to the basement lab that had so quickly become Charles’s favorite hiding place.

Rather than be hunched over his main table studying the result of his latest test, Charles was slouched back in one of the spare chairs, staring aimlessly at the wall. Erik propped up on the desk behind Charles and spun the telepath around to face him. Charles squeaked at the motion and Erik stuck out the pastries. “You look it’s been one of those days. Did your experiment not turn out?” 

Rather than answer, Charles took the box from Erik’s hands and cradled it to his chest. “What are these?”

“Those little chocolate-covered cakes you always steal from Raven.”

“Why did you get them?” Charles was staring at the cakes with unnatural attention, like the pastries held all the answers to the universe. 

“Because you’ve been quiet these last few days.” Erik slid off the table and crouched down before Charles. “Will you tell me what’s wrong?” Charles cracked open the thin cardboard lid of the box to stare at the cakes before he slipped it closed and pushed it back to Erik’s chest. He took the box out of instinct. “Did I get them wrong?”

“No, they’re perfect,” Charles’s voice cracked. “I just, I can’t trust you.” 

Erik stilled. “May I ask why?”

“Because I don’t know a thing about you!” Charles popped out of the chair and started pacing. 

Erik slipped the box to the counter behind him. “I could argue that, but what it is you want to know?” 

Charles whipped around and demanded, “What are you?”

“I do believe we’ve established that.”

“Yes, yes, you are a mutant. But what else are you?” 

Erik stiffened. “What makes you certain that I’m—”

“Stop, Erik! Just stop. Every time someone tries to ask you about it you brush them off and pretend that they’re seeing things that aren’t there. You’re keeping things from us, and we know it, and it’s awful!” 

“No one else seems to mind my reticence to tell everything about myself to people I’ve barely known for a month.”

Charles flinched back like Erik had struck him. He stepped forward to gather the telepath close to him in apology, but Charles moved away. “I suppose that’s the point then, isn’t it? You’re not willing to trust us with the truth about who you are, so why should we trust you?” Charles turned to his desk, turning his back to Erik while he fussed over the documents that didn’t really need his attention. “It’s only been a month. What on earth could you know about a person after just a month? It’s ludicrous.” 

“Charles…” Erik sighed.

“If you’ll excuse me Erik, I’ve got a date with Moira tonight and I really need to get this finished so I can be on time.”

Erik didn’t notice the tables were rattling as the metal started to snap from the strain of his temper until Accident appeared in between Erik and Charles. The fury rushed out of him at the knowledge he was moments away from killing Charles with his loss of control. A better man would’ve wished Charles good luck tonight, but opening his mouth would’ve led Erik to begging, and that he would not do. He made for the door before he did something he would regret even more. 

“I don’t—” Charles’s voice interrupted. “You should… the cakes.”

“I brought them for you.” 

“Yes, but…”

Erik whipped around. “They’re for you, Charles,” he spat. “It’s all for you. That’s the only thing that matters.” 

Erik was gone before Charles had a breath to collect himself, to find a way to fit that strange declaration in to everything else he knew. To what he thought he knew.

It was foolish to trust a man with his heart and a permanent place in his life when he seemed unwilling to do the same for Charles. It was too risky to trust a man when Charles couldn’t know everything and when there were better options to be had. Charles repeated that to himself again and again, going over all the facts that made this the most logical of decisions. Then he dropped back to his chair, gathered the cake box into his lap, and ignored how his heart ached.

@@@

“Come on Erik!” Kitty had shouted, dragging him out of the kitchen. Since Kitty was exuberant in everything, this was behavior to be expected. However, John and Bobby not complaining that Erik was abandoning them to tidy on their own, was not. Erik had raised an eyebrow and the boys had refused to meet his eye, which just confirmed the lingering suspicion that gossip had done it’s job and all of the children knew that Charles was out with someone who wasn’t him. 

He had let Kitty drag him out the kitchen’s back door and up a winding set of back stairs that once upon a time had been meant for servants. Strangely enough, he found that he was willing to let the children try and distract him from Charles missing dinner. (Date. He was on a date. Erik needed to say the words to himself.) Kitty had kept up a constant prattle about the film he was going to be forced into watching while she tried to sneak him through a back corner of the entrance hall to get him safely up to the movie room. 

Of course, the moment they stepped into the hall happened to coincide with Charles sweetly pressing his lips to Moira’s. 

Now, Erik was lurking on the stunted patio outside his room, overlooking the endless stretch of lawn behind the manor but not really seeing it. Erik had spent seven seconds feeling his pent up power unfurl like wings, readying himself for the plunge to snatch away her soul. It was only the squeeze and tug of Kitty’s hand that made him swallow back the impulse. 

He ignored the older children outside his door telling him they wanted to watch this film with him, ignored the younger children stopping by to ask if he was going to come read stories. Erik ignored them all in favor of watching the sky fade to purple while he waited for his Second to come for him. 

And come she did, scant minutes before the night truly fell. She looked harried and very nearly frantic. He almost teased her for letting the job wear her down so quickly, but she grabbed his arm and hissed, “You ain’t leavin’ yet.”

He quirked an eyebrow. That was not the way these things were supposed to go. He’d flitted back to mortality and now he wanted to go home. He wasn’t the first Death who’d rethought his decision, nor would he be the last, and as far as he was aware, Messengers weren’t supposed to question that decision. Before he could make the request to be taken back, to have his power restored to him—a request that his Second would not be able to ignore once it was verbalized—she pressed her palm against his mouth and murmured, “Trust me.”

“He has taken a lover.”

She rolled her eyes at him, like this was precisely what she did not need today. “So?”

“So?” he snapped, incredulously.

“Are they soulmates?” she asked like he was an idiot. “Has he promised to be with her, together in this life and the next?”

“I, um—”

“So, no.”

“Not that I’m aware of. But I’m not in a position to sense—”

“Vengeance,” she sighed. “Other than my husband, you are the best friend I have in this world or the next. But if you do not tell that man that you are crazy about him, I will collect his soul just to make him sense what you are. Don’t think I won’t.”

“You do recall that this promotion is temporary don’t you?”

Something dark and terrified flitted across her face. “Longer than you’d think.” With a gasp she vanished, forcibly dragged back to the realm of the Dead to keep her from dropping any more hints. That there were hints to be dropped at all gave Erik pause. 

Whatever truth he might’ve stumbled upon was drowned out by the scuffle of lockpicks outside his door, the children debating between one other whether or not helping Erik outweighed the danger of breaking in to his room. (None of them seemed to consider that Erik was a metallokinetic and would know when someone was tinkering with metal anywhere near his presence.)

Erik flicked the lock and pulled open the door, the children spilling over themselves at the sudden lack of support. Marie and Kitty were the ringleaders, with Piotr and some of the more daring younger ones dragged along for the ride. Kitty phased through the pile on top of her and popped to her feet. “Are you alright?” She practically flew into his arms, clutching at the fabric of his shirt. “We were so worried!” 

Piotr let her squeeze him for a moment before peeling her back so Erik had room to breath. “We really were,” Marie added. “Kitty told us about the Prof.”

“I am a grown man, you know.” Erik scolded without heat.

“You can be grown all you want, but that don’t change that it hurts.” The smaller children each gave them hugs of their own each of them understanding the sting in their own way. Soon enough they were tugging him out the door like their own miniature whirlwind (apparently he’d violated some kind of small child code when he didn’t make it to storytime). Somehow Marie separated the children from his side and got them propped between Kitty and Piotr, putting her alone with Erik at the back. 

Marie slipped her hand into his and murmured, “You know you’re like my best friend, right?”

Erik twisted his arm and tossed it around Marie’s shoulders while keeping her fingers mingled with his. “Likewise, little one.”

She jabbed her elbow into his side. “Not little.” Erik laughed and dropped a kiss to her forehead in the way that she would never tolerate when she was older. She pressed up against his side and murmured, “My mama always used to say things will look better in the morning.” 

Erik snorted. “My mother used to say der mentsh trakht un Got lakht.” Marie quirked an eyebrow and Erik gave a small smile. “When man plans, God laughs.” 

“I don’t think it’s as bad as all that.” 

He was going to say that he wanted her to always be so hopeful, but Marie stumbled with a pained gasp and dropped to her knees. Without thinking Erik pulled back his mental shields and called for Charles to find out what was going on. Marie pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and hissed, “They’re coming, Vengeance. They’re coming.”

He gripped her by the shoulders and pulled her close, the only person who could really give Marie any sort of comfort. “Who?”

Her words came out in a distant hiss, a strain on her vocal chords to make them form. “The one you banished. She found her way back.” Soon enough Marie screamed and arched back, the presence of Erik’s Second slipping back to the other realm where she belonged. 

Charles arrived, with the other teachers hot on his heels. Logan plucked the girl out of Erik’s arms and shook her gently, trying to bring her back to consciousness. Erik left them to it, instead looking out the nearby window for a sign of what she had warned him was to come. “Erik, what’s going on?” Charles demanded. 

“They’re coming for me.”

Raven pressed into Erik’s space. “What?”

“The ambush at the facility where you found me wasn’t for you, it was for me.”

“And why in the hell would they be coming to look for you? Because of the metal?”

It would have been simple to answer that question yes, to wipe it all away as nothing more than Erik as another powerful mutant. But he knew without looking that Charles wouldn’t believe a word of it, and would likely never forgive him for the deception. Instead he turned to Logan, who had one arm wrapped around a now conscious, but shaken, Marie. “What am I?”

“You never told me, bub.”

“I don’t have to. What am I?”

Logan pursed his lips and struggled between his innate knowledge and how ridiculous it would sound. Never let it be said that Logan was a coward and soon enough he murmured, “You’re Death.”

“He kills people?” Moira shouted. 

“We all kill people,” Logan spat. “It’s part of what we do. And he doesn’t kill them, he… collects them, right?” That last was directed to Erik, who nodded at the question. “You’re not the only Death in the world, though.”

“There are seven of us,” Erik replied, still reaching out the window with his powers. He didn’t know if by now they would know about the metal, or if they would assume telekinesis like Charles had, so he looked both for the metal of a helicopter and the blood a large group of people coming too fast. “Famine, Plague, War, Accident, Murder, Peace, and me, Vengeance. We all serve the one true Death, and each of has our legion of Messengers to help in collecting souls.”

“That’s why I can touch you,” Marie murmured. “Same reason I don’t get a thing from vegetables and corpses. You’re not really living anymore.” 

“It’s complicated. Once living, born a mutant, but now neither living nor dead. At least, not all the way.” 

“But,” Charles breathed. “Why are you here?”

Erik gave Charles a look that said he already knew the answer to that question and if he didn’t, he was a fool. Raven demanded, “Screw that! Who in the hell is coming for you? Someone you collected?”

“A Messenger who crossed the line and I banished them for it.” 

“Crossed the—”

“Stripped the souls of those who weren’t ready to die.” As much as she wanted to, Raven didn’t have anything to say to that. 

Moira managed to though. “If he’s banished how is he here?”

“She shouldn’t be. This has never happened before.”

“She?” Moira quirked her brow in an obvious implication. 

“What? You don’t believe your own gender capable of handling such a position?”

“Of course I do. I can also guess what reason you had to be the one who cast her out.”

“One of my Messengers would never do such a thing,” Erik spat.

“Women tend to do crazy things when they’re banging their boss.”

Moira had a gift for making Erik abandon all reason. The moment the words left her lips Erik launched forward and slammed her up against a wall. “She is an abomination,” he hissed. There was a scuffle going on behind him, those who loathed him and those who considered him a friend battling it out between themselves. 

“Why do you get to decide who is and isn’t someone to trust?” Moira spat. 

“She was a murderer!”

“You kill people!” Moira shouted, like there was common sense here that Erik didn’t seem to grasp. 

“I don’t kill them, I collect them and carry them on to what they have earned.” 

“How do we know that? How are we supposed to be sure that you collect only those who deserve it. That you’re as benevolent as you pretend to be. You’re not even human.” More than one person in the hall flinched at the phrase, having been called inhuman and worse.

Erik fixed her with a ferocious glower, and the doubters saw the first glimpse of the fury in Erik that made him a Death. “I am human. All the servants of Death are. She chose seven of us, one for each of her facets, and gave us the chance to put aside our mortality and collect the souls who belong to us.”

Moira snorted in pungent disbelief, and the air around Erik started to crackle. “My name is Erik Lehnsherr,” he growled, his accent growing thicker by the word. “I was born in 1928 to Jakob and Edie Lehnsherr just outside Berlin, Germany. When the Nazis came for us we fled to Poland.” The hall was stripped of everything but horrified silence while Erik advanced on Moira, who couldn’t take her eyes off him. “My father was sent to a gas chamber and my mother was shot in the head because I could not control my metal like the scientists wanted me to. I reached out with my power, trying to feel the blood moving in her veins and I lost control. I found the iron in the killer’s blood and I boiled him alive. When his body dropped with hollow veins, I turned on every Nazi in that camp and killed every. last. one of them. 

“When they were all dead, and my people were free, I dropped to my knees and rose up as the Angel of Vengeance, a servant of Death. Trust me, Miss MacTaggert, I know better than you ever could when a person is going to die, and when they are not. When a Messenger breaks that rule, it is my right and my duty to be rid of them.”

Charles wrapped his hands around Erik’s bicep and pulled back with steady pressure, drawing his attention away from the woman with her back pressed against the wall. The looming darkness that had been gathering around Erik slipped away at Charles’s touch. He bit his lip before murmuring, “What did she do?” 

Erik puffed out a slow, melancholy sort of sigh and brushed two fingers down the side of Charles’s face. Whatever answer Erik might have given was pushed away by an echo of a voice. It slipped through the halls like an intangible wind, finally taking shape in a taunting, sing-song of, “Vengeance.” Erik stiffened and drew back from Charles, turning to look out the window at the hulking black helicopters coming for them like clouds before a storm. 

There was a moment when Charles thought Erik was going to reach out with his power and smash the helicopters like tin cans. Instead his spine stiffened, and he turned to Scott with an order to gather the X-Men together and get the children prepared for evacuation. Scott darted away with Raven, Moira, and the others trailing along behind him. Erik fixed Charles with a look that made him stiffen in expectation, like Erik was about to declare some truth that Charles had been waiting for weeks to hear. Instead, Erik’s expression turned sharp and he pressed one palm to Charles’s chest and let it rest there for a moment, feeling the rapid flutter of his heartbeat before pushing him back into Logan’s waiting arms.

“Take Charles and go with the children.” 

Whatever shouting Charles might have done was drowned out by Logan’s crass grumble of refusal. Erik darted his hand past Charles and grabbed Logan by the scruff of his flannel shirt. “You’re immortal, Logan. To kill you is beyond my skill, let alone a two bit Messenger who’s fighting with strength that she’s stolen from mortals. You can stay alive long enough to get them all out.” 

Charles could feel Logan stiffen behind him, then push aside that revelation to deal with it another time. With a sharp nod, Logan wrapped an arm around Charles’s shoulders and dragged him down the hall. Charles squirmed to get out of the grip and started to declare that this was all insanity, but Logan clenched a little tighter and murmured, “Now ain’t the time, Charlie.” 

“These are my students, Logan, and this is my house. I won’t abandon them to be defended by other people!” 

Logan, quite literally, picked Charles up by the shoulders to make him keep going. “Erik can’t fight if you’re out there.”

Charles was too furious at the insinuation that he was useless in a fight to blush, and sputtered, “That’s poppycock.”

Logan dropped Charles and spun him around to grab him by the shoulders and look him in the eye. “Are you really this stupid? Every moment he can get away with Erik has spent with you. He popped out of nowhere when we were about to get attacked by the same people who are descending on your house right now. And never once has he gotten lost in the whole damn manor.” Charles sputtered, certain that he should be arguing, but not quite sure what point Logan was trying to make. Wolverine shook him to try and make the words actually stick. “You, Charles. He came for you. He’s here for you.” 

Charles… didn’t have the foggiest idea about what to say to that, and let himself be dragged down the hall. 

@@@

Whatever flaws Erik may have needed to work out with the X-Men, their response time was not one of them. Within minutes every last qualifying member was suited up and on the front lawn, taking their final instructions from Cyclops. He could hear Storm calling up a thunderstorm to hamper their instruments and force the helicopters down while she spread a slow creeping fog to clothe the grounds in cover should Logan decide it was time to run. 

Rogue was at his right hand, her striped hair pulled back into a high pony tail that next time he would warn her was a liability. Whatever questions were brought to Erik, she answered on his behalf, innately aware of what he wanted. He assumed that traditionally his spot at the center of the group and in command of the forces was meant to be taken by Cyclops with Moria at his side, since the woman was prowling around in Erik’s blind spot like she didn’t know what to do with herself. Soon enough she stopped directly behind Erik and demanded, “Why aren’t you taken the helicopters down like you did before?”

From his left—and far more gracious about the change in command structure—Scott replied, “Because we’d have to explain why there are crushed military-grade helicopters on the Professor’s land.”

In a quiet tone, Rogue chipped in. “And people don’t like to think that we can do things like that. These folks probably think Erik is just a telekinetic since we’ve never come across a metal bender before. If they keep thinking that they’ll write off what he did to the other helicopters as just a fluke. Built up strength from being trapped too long. Even with us being in the right, people will ask questions if he does it again.” 

Before Moira had the chance to make a speech about how protecting the children was more important than protecting Erik’s powers, he added, “I can’t be sure this is done until I look the Messenger in the eye and kill her myself. She might survive the helicopter’s destruction and maybe next time we might not be prepared for the attack.” 

Erik gave a brusque nod to Cyclops and the X-Men went spreading out across the lawn in groups of two. The helicopters were coming in on them hard and shaky, Storm’s electricity bringing more than one down in a violent, jolting landing. The X-Men hesitated a moment to be sure the machines weren’t about to explode, then they were off. 

Erik settled in beside Rogue, flicking away bullets and handguns all over the battlefield while she struck down those left unarmed. A few of Murder’s Messengers roamed around the field, easily gathering up the enemy soldiers who didn’t have the common sense to stay down when a mutant put them there. He let the fight carry on like this, the strong mutants protecting the weak, until he accepted that the Messenger wasn’t going to leave her downed helicopter without being tempted out. He grimaced, then turned his back to one of the oncoming soldiers in order to ‘save’ Rogue from getting shot. The soldier wasn’t a complete idiot, and he seized the chance to shoot Erik.

Erik grunted, the bullet’s impact like a solid punch to the ribs, but already he could feel his punctured lung stitching itself back together. Normally he would’ve crumpled the man’s gun and beat him about the head with it, but the point of being shot was to lure the Messenger into a false sense of security. Erik dropped to his knees and waivered in a moment of indecision before committing to the ruse and dropping face-first to the ground.

He’d imagined the Messenger strolling out of the helicopter to bask in her moment of triumph, however, he didn’t anticipate her wanting anything more than to kill him. So her popping out of nowhere and plunging a hand into his chest came as a surprise. 

She wrenched her hand back, and in a feral rush the pain set in. She kicked him over with the pointed toe of one boot, and cradled in the palm of her hands was a cracking ball of burgundy light. In between the gasping breaths, Erik began to panic. “You never were a very good actor,” she drawled. “But, I suppose I shouldn’t be too displeased since you gave me the opportunity I needed. I thought I was going to have to actually pick a fight with you to get my hands on your immortality.” She dropped to a crouch beside him, the glowing root of Erik’s strength perched tauntingly close in her fingertips. 

“I spent a long time hovering the darkness, Vengeance. Near to eons before I found my way back in.” She traced one nail across the surface, the power there snapping at her skin like it knew it wasn’t meant for her. “Do you know what I learned to do, out there in the dark?”

“Monologue?” He spat between bloodied lips.

“I learned the secret. That this is what makes you, you. You can pass on your responsibilities to your second—and don’t you worry, I’ll be getting that from her before too long—but the piece that makes you the Angel of Vengeance is this.” She nodded to the orb. “This little thing. And now it’s mine, and you’re nothing but a mortal. And I’ll be an Angel.” Erik had always understood that being Vengeance was something he had always been and would always be, but it seemed she’d found a way to strip him of that. 

She licked her lips and brought the orb up to her mouth. She spread her jaws wide to swallow it whole, and went straight to the ground when Rogue smashed into her. The Messenger shrieked in a rage and whipped back her elbow to catch Rogue in the face, careful to keep the other hand around the orb and keep it cradled close to her body. Rogue was a talented combatant, but the Messenger was still an otherworldly creature, so she kicked Rogue back and out of the grapple. The Messenger dove for Rogue, hands aimed straight for her vulnerable chest. 

Erik caught up one of the fallen bullets from the ground and sent it into the Messenger’s chest. Rogue scrambled out of range, while the Messenger hissed at Erik for wounding her. She wasn’t a true Messenger, but she’d managed to draw enough strength from her humans to stop the wound from keeping her down too long. She lurched over to Erik and spat, “You just had to make this so difficult on yourself, didn’t you? If you had been a little less diligent in the beginning I wouldn’t have had to do this. All I wanted was my freedom. The freedom I never had as a mortal, and never had as a Messenger. If you’d just let me take the immunity from your sweet little telepath when this all started, then you could’ve stayed an Angel and spent the last few years wooing the boy while he was dead, and I was free.”

“What?” Charles croaked. Erik didn’t even have the strength to glower at Charles for being where he shouldn’t, only to be grateful that he’d get to see Charles one last time before he died.

The Messenger had pieced herself back together now and turned on Charles with a mocking laugh. “Haven’t you figured out that it was all for you? Every breath Vengeance has drawn since the first moment he saw you has been about trying to keep you safe. Trying to give you a long and happy, little life. He’s even been in cahoots with the other Deaths to try and convince them to leave him alone when common sense said you should’ve died. “Don’t you remember when you were thirteen how you came into the full flush of your power and you laid in bed for a week? Plague came to fetch you and Vengeance talked him out of letting you die. Then there was that summer your stepfather drowned in the bottle and Vengeance and Murder had to fight with one another to keep him from letting your stepfather throw you down some stairs.” 

With every word the Messenger advanced on Charles, taking a twisted sort of pleasure from rewriting everything he’d known about his life. “Fate has let all sorts of things run amok to see what it would take to kill you. But it seems that nothing can compare to the devotion of an Angel of Death.” 

“Wh-why?” Charles stammered, whether to why Erik would care so much or why they would want him to die, the Messenger didn’t know, but she didn’t waste the opportunity to torment him.

“Because you’re a strange little thing, Charles Xavier. All telepaths are born with shields around their minds, but you’re a bit too odd for that. You’ve got shields around your very soul. That’s never happened before. These shields kept it so the Fates and the Deaths and the Fortunes could not see you. They can see everyone but you.” She looked down at Erik with a smirk. “Vengeance is an Angel of Death and even he has his second kneeling beside him right now because she knows that every moment that passes it grows more and more likely that he will die where he lies. But you, they can’t see a damn thing about you. Not a single likelihood of death or destiny, and I want that freedom.”

Once she drew Charles’s attention to Erik sprawled on the ground and drawing shuddering breaths, he ignored the creature’s monologue. Instead Charles stumbled his way over to Erik and cradled the man’s torso in his lap. Charles wiped away the blood slipping from Erik’s lips with the cuff of his cardigan and murmured, “Take it then.”

There were long moments of silence through the whole battlefield, forcing Charles to look up. “Take it, whatever you want. But leave me him.” 

“No,” Erik croaked, then coughed on the blood pooling in his lungs. 

Charles twisted him closer, pressing his forehead to Erik’s. “Shhh, love. She can have whatever she wants from me so long as she leaves you alone.” 

“It’s your power Xavier,” she whispered. “I will reach into your soul and take what makes you a mutant, what makes you immune to Fate’s whims.”

“I don’t care!” Charles snapped. “Take it and be done then!”

Hank leapt onto the scene, medical bag in hand and completely ignoring the villain in between him and his patient. The woman furrowed at what the blue mutant was doing there, then sneered. “You called him with your mind, Xavier. You’ll be dead within the week without your powers you’re so dependent on them.”

Charles slowly lowered Erik to the ground and let Cyclops move him away while Jean used her gifts to help Hank control the bleeding. (Something Erik and his understanding of blood had taught her over the weeks.) Cyclops tried to keep himself in between Charles and the woman, but Charles stepped around his friend and shouted, “What do you care?”

She bore her teeth in a strange rictus of a smile. “I care because the Fates will adore me for finally putting you within their grasp. Perhaps they’ll even let me watch when Vengeance destroys himself for hurting you.”

Charles laughed. If there had been silence on the field before it was nothing compared to the stunned sound surrounding him now. The chuckle was pained, but Charles’s voice was steady. “You don’t understand. I don’t care what happens to me in life or in death if it means I get to have him. You can take my power and you make him mortal, but nothing you do will take him from me.”

With a ripple of power she darted forward and seized Charles by the throat. “Are you sure about that?”

Charles didn’t give her the victory of a flinch. “You said yourself that he’s been with me from the beginning, when he was dead and I was mortal. You think him being mortal and me being dead will be too much of a difference? Go ahead and take it.” The woman sneered at him, and Charles gave the slightest shake of his head to Rogue when she looked like she was going to charge. 

Charles couldn’t help the scream when the woman shoved her hand into his chest. After what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than a moment, she pulled back, a glowing orb of golden light clenched between her fingers. She released Charles and let him drop to his knees while she swallowed it whole. She stood there for a moment, her hand almost hovering in front of her while the telepathy settled over her mind, then she started to scream. 

Charles shot back up to his feet and grabbed her wrists before she could pull the orb back out of her own chest. He’d never done this without his powers, but Charles knew the exact way that others spoke to him with their thoughts, and he took up the same tenor for her. I had a brain born to be a telepath and still my power nearly killed me. You, you haven’t a drop of mutant blood in your body and you’re trying to take on the strength of an omega level mutant. 

Can you hear them? All my people and their desire that perhaps you might just drop dead where you stand? Can you hear your own soldiers struggling to free themselves from the ties you’ve got wrapped around their souls? Can you hear them dying? Hear their minds screaming at the absolute blind panic that comes from a life about to end? Can you hear my students fleeing for their lives because you betrayed your oath to respect the sanctity of life and death? And you’re not quite human, are you? I bet you can hear you’re the other Messengers, all here collecting their souls, every voice among them ripping through your mind, a mind not meant to carry the burden. 

The woman was so consumed with Charles projecting into her mind that she couldn’t fight when Charles wrenched the orb out of her hands and passed it off to Rogue. The woman felt the orb slip from her fingers and thrashed in Charles’s grip to get it back. Charles fought back against her frantic strength to keep her wrists contained. The rapport of a gun broke through the huffed breaths of their struggle as one of the Messenger’s soldiers managed to get off a shot. Charles had a strange moment of anticipation, knowing with his ears that the bullet was coming, but being without the grim sort of satisfaction that came from hired gunmen when they knew a shot had gone true. 

But the pain never came. 

Charles twisted the fragile skin around the woman’s wrists and forced her closer so he could chance a glance to the side. The gunman had dropped to the dirt, his own bullet cast back between his eyes. Hank still had his steady hands hovering in the air above where Erik had been moments before, staring at the mutant like his scientific brain couldn’t understand how swallowing an orb of glowing light could bring Erik back.

Erik strode forward, every step so determined you’d never know he’d been mere breaths from death. A flicker of fear flashed across her face before she spat, “Cast me out again and again, I will find my way back and I will hunt him until the end of time.” 

Charles puffed up, ready to spout back something about how she could hunt all she wanted, but Erik had no such patience. “You never understood mortals, did you?” Erik smirked. Her face twisted to something feral that she must have learned out in the darkness. Instead of giving her the chance to pontificate, Erik took Charles’s hand and pressed it to the woman’s chest. Charles furrowed in confusion, then felt a steady pulse of warmth while the woman started to scream. Struggle as she might, there was no getting away from the solid grip Erik had on the back of her neck and the power he had to be expelling to keep her still. 

The heat beneath Charles’s palm grew to a searing burn, but Erik kept Charles there. Moments before Charles tried to rip his hand away, he felt something beneath his palm swell. He pulled back his hand, and with it came the glowing golden orb of his telepathy. Charles was so relieved to see it again that he didn’t quite pay attention when Erik pushed him to the side, then stepped forward to snap the woman’s neck. 

Charles grimaced at the disturbing echo of the crack, but when Erik reached out his hand, Charles took it. At Erik’s touch, things made sense. Scattered around the field were people who Charles’s eyes couldn’t quite settle on. His mind filled in the gaps to make them appear completely human, but he knew better than to believe the Messengers were quite as they appeared. 

With Erik’s sight to guide him, the woman who had caused all this trouble looked very nearly asleep. Although, Charles supposed that made some sort of sense since death was probably far less terrifying to those individuals who crossed the border between life and death every day. Charles felt Erik’s rush of affection for a woman who approached the body, and gave the slightest of smirks for Erik. The woman was Erik’s second in command, though Charles was a bit more wrapped up in the delightful rush of being able to know some of what Erik was thinking than he was with trying to parse through the strange way Erik’s second felt familiar even though she was taking pains to keep her face to only the barest wisps of clarity. 

Erik’s second pressed two fingers to the Messenger woman’s forehead and it was like a fine mist rose up from her body. Whatever it was that made this woman herself was suddenly gathered up into the second’s palm and slipped away with her. The corpse that was left behind was just that, a corpse. Erik kept his fingers entwined with Charles and wrapped his arm around the other man’s shoulder, pulling him tight. 

Rogue pressed in to Erik’s other side, and Erik put his other arm around her shoulder and pressing a quick kiss to her forehead. Charles was more than grateful that Erik had that extra support when Moira stormed over with her hand twitching towards her gun. Before she had the chance to scold, Erik murmured, “She was already dead.”

Moira stumbled. “What?”

“People don’t become Messengers until they have reached the end of their natural life. Those who are wholly dead cannot enter the world of the living, so they are held somewhere in the middle. When the Messenger betrayed her calling, the immortality that had been keeping her in that place was taken from her, and her soul was sent away in punishment. She found a loophole to claw her way back from death. No person gets a second chance at life.”

None of the X-Men could summon up the desire to be terribly disappointed in the woman’s death since it seemed she’d been stalking Charles since he was a child. What disquiet they might have had at Erik dispatching her without a warning was quelled at the bone deep certainty they all felt at his statement. 

The X-Men dispersed at a mental nudge from Jean (who, second only to Erik and Charles, understood the void that had been the woman’s mind before Erik returned her to death). Moira was tempted to say something else, but it was difficult to have an argument about the evils presented by Erik when Charles was looking up at him with a bright blush and Rogue was stripping off her glove in a clear threat. 

“You offered up your powers for me,” Erik murmured.

“Yes, well,” Charles blushed. “I knew she wouldn’t be able to handle them.”

“You suspected.”

“I’ll have you know it was a very well thought out plan.”

“You’ll get no argument from me. You won the day.” 

Charles puffed up slightly. “I did, didn’t I? Well, it’s only to be expected.”

“Of course. You do love me after all.”

If possible, Charles flushed an ever deeper shade of red and tried to pull back, but Erik pressed his hands low on the small of Charles’s back and tugged him straight into his chest. “I do think that’s overstating things a bit.”

Erik just smirked, he knew Charles too well to be distracted by Charles’s terrible attempts at lying. “I suppose I’ll have to spend another lifetime trying to win you over then. A hardship I shall willingly bear.”

Charles rolled his eyes at the unnecessary dramatics, but pressed his hands to Erik’s ribs, taking in their steady, comforting movement. “If you must, I suppose I shall have to let you.” Erik lowered his head and touched his forehead to Charles’s, sharing his breath while Charles flushed at the steady stroke of Erik’s unbound mind across his own.


End file.
